Deciding when to start swathing canola can be one of the most difficult calls you make at harvest. Too early, and you give up yield potential, too late and you can risk big losses. Knowing your hybrids, recognizing ideal swath-timing colour change and verifying actual seed colour, not pod colour, change will all go a... Read More
Category: Crop Production
Ever wondered what it would be like to skim just above beautiful flowering sunflowers on a bright summer day? We can't arrange a real-life ride-along in a crop duster, but courtesy of Mark Rohrich and Jenny Dewey Rohrich at Maverick Ag and LaDelle George of LaDelle's Spraying service, based in North Dakota, you can at... Read More
Up until now, the Manitoba government has remained mum on the whereabouts of three canola fields that showed signs of clubroot infection in 2013. Farmers and agronomists had asked for more information regarding positive pathogen finds in order to better fine-tune best management avoidance practices. Today, Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Development released a map... Read More
It’s nothing personal, Stratego fungicide, but it’s time for a sprucing up. Winter wheat and soybean growers should soon have access to Stratego Pro, says Allan Kaastra, with Bayer CropScience. The new formulation swaps out propiconazole with prothioconazole, and should be available for farmers to use by 2015, pending appropriate regulatory approvals. Kaastra says Stratego... Read More
Cereals Canada, the newly-formed, industry-led cereals group, recently released its inaugural strategic planning document. The plan, available here as a PDF, sets out the vision and mission for the organization and defines a path forward for "sustainable profitability for the entire value chain." From opportunities and market development, to threats and competition, the 13-page document... Read More
One year and one field does not a trial make, says Mark Van Veen, with Salford, in regards to some of the findings gleaned from the company's tillage trials in Michigan. Salford has spent a few years evaluating several types and timing of tillage in an effort to put together reasonable comparisons of expected planter... Read More
There are at least two reasons why having an added herbicide tolerance gene built-in to a soybean variety makes sense — one, to make up for early season non-competitiveness of the crop, and, two, because of the increasing risk of glyphosate-tolerant weeds. To that end, Monsanto recently rolled out its soybean XTend trait — dicamba... Read More
In this episode of the Corn School, PRIDE Seeds' market development agronomist Ken Currah takes a look at corn development stages, starting with tasselling and moving through development, to help growers evaluate maturity and yield potential. By tracking hybrids from pollination to the black layer stage, Currah shows how growers can assess each hybrid's adaptability... Read More
Hiring an aerial applicator means fewer tracks in the crop and often a quicker spray application, but spray planes are not miraculous, says Tom Wolf. In fact, they deal with a lot of the same challenges as their well-grounded counterparts. Related: Spray Tips with Tom Wolf — Ep. 8: Measuring Spray Coverage In this episode... Read More
It's been over one hundred years since the powered rotary hoe was invented, and we may not be done with it quite yet. Research by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is being conducted around using the rotary hoe as a weed management tool in pulses, inspired in combination by previous work in the organic sector and... Read More